I am moved to write in response to recent articles highlighting how American Indian and Alaska Native children were treated for decades in religious boarding schools. As late as 1969, I experienced something similar — if not so horrific — in the public school run by the state of Alaska in Nondalton. I was hired midyear to replace a teacher who’d been moved to replace another lost in an airplane accident. Unfortunately, I was newly graduated from college and didn’t know much about teaching.
Before I started, the head teacher told me I would be responsible, among other things, for the eighth-grade history class, and that the eighth-graders were totally demoralized, so anything I could do with them would be better. I had a large stack of glossy hard-cover American History magazines, so I took them with me and distributed them to the class, asking that they each read a story that interested them and write a paragraph or a page about it. They all chose to read and write about American Indians.
On reflection, that wasn’t much of a surprise, since almost all of them were Alaska Natives. In their history textbook, they’d been reading about the expansion of railroads in the eastern states in the 1830s — something that hardly interested them. So I dropped the textbook and ordered every film and filmstrip I could find about American Indians.
Promptly, the head teacher informed me that our job was to “civilize” the Natives, not to reinforce their culture. And he locked up the film and filmstrip projectors so I couldn’t use them. I’m sorry to say that I was then as demoralized as the students, and just went through the motions for the rest of the year. I wonder how long that attitude persisted, even in Alaska’s public schools?
— Rick Wicks
Anchorage
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